Traveling Supernova
by ADyingGalaxy
Summary: AU: Vader/Anakin lives, long enough to exist in the same galaxy as Rey.
1. Prologue

_A/N: I've always wanted to write this, but only now have had the courage to try. There are threads beginning in this introduction that will be expanded on as the story continues. Please R &R! _

* * *

Vader sits in a highly oxygenated chamber and lives inside his unfortunately intact mind for the rest of his days.

Or he wants to, at least.

Luke offers sincere, warm smiles every time he enters the chamber, and his father is sure that that's just due to the overabundance of oxygen going to the boy's brain.

Luke would, in turn, complain that he wasn't a boy any longer. And it was strangely heart-wrenching, how domestic they both sounded, especially without Vader's vocoder in the midst.

* * *

Leia knew that he was alive, and wanted nothing to do with him. He can't begrudge her that, certain that the former princess prayed every day to forget his existence altogether. That knowledge doesn't quell the hurt that arises whenever he asks after her, and her smuggler, and her son soon after the End of the Emperor. Vader couldn't believe that he'd survived long enough to live in the same galaxy as his grandson, and to have his son sitting next to Vader and tell him so in person.

Luke is like a messenger by then, amid his journeys to restart an all-new Order without his father's help. Vader, as Anakin or not, would never consider himself a Jedi, and would never inflict the full reality of what the original Order had been – a cruel, stifling, and long-obsolete elitist club that mislead itself as it encouraged sanitization over faith.

Luke could never hope to survive, as bright and beautiful a star as he is, and could never be asked to replicate such an appalling system. Instead, he tells Vader of the work he's done in coaxing those with Force potential to join him, to consider his cause even without the assurance that Luke was and will always be a hero in the galaxy at large.

And he tells Vader about his twin sister, about Anakin's daughter and her efforts to remake what had been shattered long before her existence.

Vader is achingly proud and feels such disgust at himself with all her achievements and failures, which he knows he doesn't deserve to have any relative pride for. And, yet.

* * *

The woman beside his son is smaller, fit but not overtly so and with mousy brown hair and shifting hazel eyes. She'd come to see him along with Luke, and Vader would have to have been an idiot not to realize that this was his future daughter-in-law, if one wanted to assign a formal title to it.

"Lord Vader." She nods and stumbles into a curtsy in his presence, ignoring the fact that he is a crumpled man with skin the pall of an ugly, empty moon. Beside her, Luke shakes his head like a sullen teen and despite himself, Vader smiles.

"I trust my son wished for you to address me otherwise."

Luke doesn't speak for his future wife – he never would, still being too good deep inside, though he sighs through his nostrils almost petulantly.

Then again, who's to say the woman, whose chin sets with pride and whose eyes speak of thunder, would even let the Last Jedi have a chance.

"I know. You are Anakin Skywalker." Her name is Mara, and she lets him know before she and Luke leave Vader's hidden domain, that which is – to the credit of Luke's stories – very like a deceased Master Yoda's in a tangled swamp. It's a room on an island of a planet, tucked away from view.

"I am more comfortable addressing the man in the suit, nonetheless."

* * *

Luke and Mara are, as a pair, less prone to visiting Vader. If the visiting enters a regulatory period, it's usually Luke who comes to keep him company. And when Luke comes bearing news or his measured and gentile presence, Vader finds that he doesn't mind that the chamber has no windows and no forms of communication, aside from the long-range Com with only Luke's contact within.

He isn't there for any of it, but Vader sees the weariness beneath Luke's glistening eyes and the lines that don't deepen around his mouth as much as they do in his forehead and that make his features sink into unkempt flesh.

Luke finds other Force Sensitives, never to be kept extinct for long.

Luke decides upon one crucial place for a Jedi temple.

Luke takes in Ben, his nephew and Vader's unseen grandson, for training. And that is when the darkness settles most perceptibly in the boy's features.

Luke and Mara marry.

The Jedi are gradually returning, and everyone knows that Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were the children of a now deceased Dark Lord.

* * *

"Father." There's that smile again, that Luke's father had feared he'd lost in the chaos of life and mundanity. It's the same smile that Vader was finally allowed to see after the second Death Star was destroyed. And it'd never been more overwhelming since then, until now, as Luke cradled a tiny and precious lifeform in his visibly quivering arms.

"I couldn't risk bringing her just after she was born." The fair-haired boy – man – said in a hushed tone.

Luke brought the baby closer, until she was just under Vader's nose, waking and fussing at the disliked angle she was being held at. The tiny girl would've much preferred being nestled into her father's chest, where it was warm and safe and where it was easier for her to feel the love for herself that Luke broadcasted in waves.

"Father, meet Rey. Rey, meet your grandfather." Luke's voice was a humble whisper in the mostly silent chamber.

Rey.

She whimpered, before Vader brought a gloved hand closer. It killed him, to even think of laying his mechanical appendage on the baby's brow, but it would kill Luke if he didn't. The tips of his fingers rested on the crown of Rey's fragile head, and she opened large, hazel eyes at the contact as she and her grandfather made their first ever connection through the Force.

Neither Vader nor Anakin had ever fallen so far in love with another soul until that moment.

"You should never have brought her here." Vader heard himself, though his battered, aged voice was lost in the continual pump of compression and the clicking on all sides of his chamber.

There was an edge of weariness to Luke's tone, though Vader couldn't tear his eyes away from Rey. From his granddaughter.

"Father." Luke berated, gently. "Of course, I was going to."

The baby reached through the air, tiny hands flying up to meet Vader halfway and tearing his monstrous heart into shreds.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you for reading!_

* * *

"I feel just terrible every time I question him." Luke breathed out wearily. "I know it hurts Ben more – he must think I don't trust him, though I want to! But, he harbors such… strong resentment."

Luke sat across from Vader, running a hand through his locks while Rey bounced on his knee. The girl was still tiny, but now fully capable of sitting up and babbling nonsensically as she looked at Vader with keen eyes; and fully capable of getting her grandfather to smile every time she caught his attention.

"Sometimes it's a fog over all else, and I can hardly see Ben." Luke's expression went slack, and Rey took notice when he forwent bouncing her rhythmically as he had been for the past few minutes. "I've had nightmares about it, and they blend into reality more than I'd like."

"Son…"

The Jedi scrubbed a hand down his face, letting his daughter tug the other hand so that it was bracing her from sliding off his knee and down to the frigid ground.

Vader had never seen Leia's son, let alone met him. Nevertheless, the warning signs were there from the start, while Vader hadn't sought any attempt to interfere with Luke's teachings. It was not his place, not even now, but the former Lord smoothed a gloved hand over the arm of his chair anxiously.

In his mind, the place which was always severed from any outside probing, Vader rationalized his son's capability with the fact that Ben was still a young boy. He wasn't yet twelve-standard years, and there would be many years ahead where understanding would level off Ben's temperamental disposition.

Vader had to believe that, as the other possibilities that swirled over the troubled boy's head were (not) unthinkable.

He sighed heavily. "You should not let these fears keep you from what you wish to do. Ben's path is not set in stone, you must believe that."

Luke's vision clouded over briefly, but he nodded. "I'm still… Mara will have everything under control until my return."

"I'd decided against it before, but I'm going to take Rey with me this time."

* * *

Mara was the first to bustle in, wearing a net of rags for robes and an expression closer to worry than anger. She waited for her husband to arrive, but already Vader saw the slip of a child nestled in a old-fashioned sling around her back.

Rey slept, oblivious to frenetic energy that was acutely palpable between the three adults in Vader's chambers. Vader noticed that her legs were tucked into the sling in a heap, and he felt a sliver of joy at the realization that the girl had grown since he'd last gotten a visit from her and her father.

"Why have you come?" Vader got straight to the point, growing weary as the tension overwhelmed and drained at his obsolete senses. He was – more or less – a husk of every past incarnation he'd ever taken on, and processing misery of this magnitude. He wondered with distaste how he'd withstood thousands of lives distinguishing from existence without losing his resolve.

Even a mountain eroded with enough time, he supposed.

Luke's mission to travel to the further reaches of the galaxy, where the light of billions of stars was hesitant to touch, in search of new Force-wielders was overdue. Vader had assumed that his son had already begun his journey, along with Vader's granddaughter in a bet to outlast the lingering fear that there was more danger at home than in the unknown.

Yet there she was, and there was Mara looking less put-together than Vader had ever seen her. She looked a startling shade shy of a woman he'd known once, a woman in the throes of cobbled, inscrutable legislation.

"I would have preferred leaving this up to my aunts, or even to Leia." Mara started bluntly, pacing while Luke stood with his hands behind his back.

"It's out of the question." Luke retorted, grimly. He didn't flinch when Mara turned on him, glare blazing.

"How can you say that? Luke!" Mara strode to meet her husband head-on. "How could we possibly trust our daughter with –"

She looked away from Luke's stone face and whipped toward the ever-stationary hermit. "We've come to ask if… if the worst were to happen and we had no other options… Would you keep Rey hidden?"

* * *

' _Have you felt it?'_

The com had come and slipped into Vader's waiting palm once he'd called for it, and though he couldn't see his son, Vader felt an electric current through his body at Luke's tone.

"Yes." Vader claimed, defeated.

 _A disturbance._ The man had felt it like the burning of circuits in his core, popping and hissing and shaking him down to his knees when he attempted to rise from his seat. Vader had lost all feeling when it came to Mara's signature in the wider galaxy, like losing a finger to pressured nerves in one's sleep. Something deeper and sinister had lurked within that moment and beyond, when the brunette woman's life-force did not appear as a resilient spark to ignite that phantom limb. Vader had strained, but couldn't pinpoint her after she been clouded by a more familiar, less welcome cloak shrouded everything in darkness.

Vader had never seen Ben, let alone met him. But his family was so connected that all one had to do to find some sense of acquaintance was look for it. The former Lord's insides curdled when he realized that amid that shroud was a very, very familiar beast, like an extension of Vader himself.

 _'It's Ben. It's –'_ The voice on the other end fizzled out and cracked through the faulty transmission. _'Mara – I can't reach – headi – -ack –'_

The sound of a high-pitched cry, coupled with the familiar aux of an accelerating ship phased the transmission out before the signal was cut off completely. Vader let the com fall to his lap as he leaned back as far as he could in his seat, shutting his aching eyes as the galaxy gave him no peace.

* * *

Vader could not remember a time when he'd been reduced to wishing for company so furiously, or for any news at all. He waited and waited and waited for some sign of life outside of the blinding chamber that burned his eyes when he continued to wake from stasis. The artificial, white lights were headache-inducing, but still better than the dreams that Vader suffered when he forced his mind to recede into unconsciousness.

Then came the unexpected, yet entirely precedent moment when his hibernation gave way to the sound of a harried landing just outside, and the furious pound of footfalls against the bald earth of the moon bearing Vader's isolation.

The doors slid open to reveal his son and granddaughter, coated in sweat and rain and tears. Luke tracked mud onto the antiseptic floor as he pushed in, hauling his daughter into the room before the entrance had time to slide close behind him.

Bits of burning ash and mud flaked from Luke's tunic as he set the child down just a hair's length away from Vader, whom had frozen while still unfocused after a dizzying attempt to rest.

The Jedi knelt to the ground in front of his daughter, bringing up steady hands to which Rey immediately walked toward. Luke wrapped his hands around the little girl's face and gently guided her closer to look into her eyes. There was no hiding the sorrow in his expression, as he stroked around his daughter's ears and swept loose strands of hair from around her sticky temples and cheeks.

"I'm going to have go away for a little bit now, sweetheart." The man said, as Vader observed quietly and kept his personal discomfort to himself. "Just until I find Mommy, and then we'll all be together again. I promise."

Rey didn't move away, but she looked anywhere but at her father while full to the brim with confusion and uneasiness. Luke pulled her into an embrace, regardless, and kissed the top of her sweat-soaked brow.

"Please, please take care of her." Luke whispered hoarsely, eyes trained on his father as he stood up from the sterile floor and relinquished his hands from around Rey's face. "Please."

Vader couldn't do anything more than remain silent, staring at the anguished man before him. The older man feared that saying anything, with his damnably weak inflection and his inability to even rise from what may as well have been another throne befitting a pathetic emperor, would only stunt the inevitability. Vader had no chance when it came to changing Luke's mind.

Rey clutched at Vader's pant leg, no doubt feeling the near-searing metal limb beneath the heat resistant material. She paid it no mind for once, as her father's pronounced outline grew less distinguishable in the gloom of the outside – the unnervingly quiet and isolating outside.

He didn't look back to meet her confused gaze, afraid for the first time in years at the real possibility that he, Luke, would crumble and turn to hiding himself. It was already impossibly painful to hear Rey's questioning probes through their bond and ignore them.

Luke Skywalker vanished, leaving behind his daughter and a barely crackling com unit that never picked up.

And he never returned.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thank you to everyone who commented! Please R &R! _

* * *

Vader felt the headrest before anything else, warm and solid. He wasn't entirely conscious yet, somewhere a-slip in between dreaming and waking.

 _Lingering so close to the ground, having to pry one's gaze from the dark, obsidian gravel below – rock formed from volcanic activity that went dormant long ago – and crane one's neck up over the cliff's edge. A spray of sea and salt flecked against his face, and he could feel it all as the wind ruffled his clothes and danced with his hair._

Ashen eyelids fluttered as the dream pressed on. A dream… a genuinely good dream that seemed like a memory.

 _He could see a widespread ocean before him, so vast and galactically-proportioned that it surely must've dwarfed their home. Even their island in the middle of one all-consuming sea was too big to comprehend for him, or whomever it was that remembered it._

It couldn't be his own. He had few good memories, and those he did were too far away as well as too recent to recall as such.

 _He turned and saw the outline of a mechanized hand, wiry and shining like a warning beacon among the organic and the natural, at eye level with himself._

Vader's eyes opened, and he squinted at the artificial florescence that appeared from that damnable image. The mechanical hand was gone, as was the ocean and the island, but it was like he'd woken just as he was about to crash into a sun.

When he groaned, it was his natural voice that filled the moderate silence and what made him realize that he'd been resting offhandedly. Vader's sleep, if it could be called that, had been fitful, deep, and rather devoid of anything close to a weary thought or a heart-starting terror. And immediately, Vader sat up straight in his damnable chair and put his mind back up to focusing on their hideout.

"Rey…?" He called out in the void space, still too white and sanitary but intact. Vader had never regained the energy to do something about it despite hating his surroundings – well, resenting them. In that moment, however, the former lord was grateful that nothing stood apart as out of the ordinary as he tried to scan every inch of space surrounding himself. The chair turned, in time to swivel and for Vader to breathe a ragged sigh of relief while he watched the only active shape aside from himself jogging forward.

Rey was alright. She looked no worse for wear, still a living mess of browns, tans, and greens amid the harsh white around her. Her visage reminded Vader of Endor. Of Naboo, of Dubrillion, of so many more places that Vader could barely put a name to, let alone remember visiting or inhabiting.

All that truly mattered was that when he saw her coming toward him without hesitation, he could recall the jubilation of seeing more green in the galaxy than when he'd seen a forest here or a tree there.

Vader pitched forward, ruminations dissipating as he watched the little girl racing toward him fall to the ground. He was on the cusp of raising his voice in panic, for the last time Rey had fallen, she'd chipped one of her front teeth and tried to hide her tears for ten long minutes. Before he could do anything, the girl was already standing back up, opulent hazel eyes upon Vader as she walked forward with notable care. She no longer toddled, but carried herself with graceful steps and a vision that failed to look down for assurance that she was balancing upon the cold metal floor. Even after a tumble…

Rey reached him, crawling up onto the seat before he was drawing her into his lamp with one arm. Her fearlessness was no longer surprising nor daunting, but the way with which she stared, solemn and searching even as she sought a hug, felt too familiar for comfort.

Vader's granddaughter took after him in many ways, and it was both fascinating and distressing to see such a young life weighted by a quiet, Spartan existence like this one. With an imposing, but severely depressed exile like himself.

She pouted at him and his thoughts, brow furrowing as she forced his gaze by shoving her tiny hands against his pale face, acting as a parent would toward a abhorrent child . "Your arm."

Vader followed her words, looking down at one arm, then the other. He realized in a flash what she meant, even as she elaborated. "T's all cluttered."

His right arm was upended against the armrest, the inner workings of the machine-driven forearm from wrist to elbow split open and revealing wires and circuitry. From a glance, it greatly resembled sinew and veins like a normal, organic limb would have; but that was mere medical trickery at work. The multicolored tubing and the knots of gears that ground together and circumvented electrical mishap were artificial as they'd been since Vader had last had them replaced.

"I must've been working on it… before I…" He had no idea why he'd leave an entire part of himself, mechanized or not, opened and vulnerable like this. "…Had my rest."

Rey peered at the opening, nose nearly pressed into the whirring cluster of faulty acid-green and acid-blue dyed wires, with analytical eyes. As soon as she'd gotten up to meet his eye, Rey was off, descending from Vader's enormous throne and running away.

"Where are you going, little one?" He asked, slightly alarmed as she bounded back to where she'd come from. The chamber wasn't that big, even with its addition built to accommodate over-night visits from before, from when Luke had visited, alone and then with a bundled, newborn Rey.

She never stopped, rounded a corner, and was gone from sight. "Fix it!"

* * *

When Rey returned, she had a tool box to drag along the ground. It rolled on little wheels over the divots in the floor, but it was no astronomic droid, only a little thing with specialized supplies inside. She held it out to him first, and Vader lifted the both with one arm, feeling surprised over how easy it was getting to rotate his own joints move without becoming overly exhausted.

"You know I can fix it myself. I shouldn't have left it like this in the first place." Vader posited, but trying to grab the harris wrench from her was like trying to retrieve a bantha from a sarlaac pit.

She hunched over the offending appendage, as she'd done many times in the past. Only 5 standard years-old and Rey was equipped to manage Vader's limb circuitry like she were a medic three times her age.

Briefly, Vader wondered if the Force, of the ghost of Obi-Wan himself, were playing a lifelong joke on him, still. "Unless…"

He tried to make Rey face him, mimicking what she'd done beforehand, but when his glove went to lift under her chin, Rey shied away from him. She grumbled, and Vader smiled. "Unless, little one, it was you who put me to sleep."

Rey continued to pry into the arm, not daring to look at her grandfather for even a moment. Her guilt and unease were so tangible through their connection, nevertheless, any resistance was genuinely futile.

He fought to be stern. "Rey."

"It is I that should be putting you to sleep, not the other way around."

She looked up, wild-eyed and defiant. And yet, her lower lip trembled. "You wouldn't sleep without my help! You couldn't!"

"Rey."

Her greenish eyes filled with tears, and the guileless, earnest agony that rolled off her being in waves made Vader back away from trying to pacify her with something other than words. Where physical strength on his part was ever-growing, enduring the sensitivity of their bond was still too much at times. It had been the same with Rey's father, with there being moments where Vader could barely handle the good feelings that were sent his way – the appreciation, the loyalty, humor, and even the love.

Finally, like the child she was meant to be, Rey moved away from the toolbox and embraced her grandfather's middle. She could barely wrap her arms around him, sniffling and trying to keep the worst of it inside. Vader had failed on multiple occasions to tell her that experiencing her hurt and her worry on the outside was just as well as when she underwent them inside. He wanted to say as much, but held back for some unsightly, ugly reasoning within that told him that he wouldn't be able to stomach it himself.

"You were cold, again." Her tinny voice was muffled by his chest, head dipped to the side to keep away from his ever-lit chest plate. Vader carefully patted her back with his good hand, feeling a sting and watching as his vision of the white oxygen chamber blurred into an incomprehensible mesh.

He waited it out in silence, until Rey was all-cried-out and back to fixing his arm like nothing had ever happened.


End file.
